The Great Santini (3 page)

"I meant they're the best at waging war. You'll thank your lucky stars if this country is ever attacked. They're the greatest fighting force in the whole world."

"Let's say a Hail Mary for our lucky stars," Mary Anne said, suppressing a giggle.

"Hush your foolishness, Mary Anne," Mrs. Meecham said, lightening up and smiling. "Ya'll aren't serious about anything."

"I don't want to leave Atlanta, Mama," Ben heard his younger sister whine to his mother. "I'm gonna run away if I have to leave Atlanta."

"I know you don't want to leave, dumpling, but we must. Your father has orders," Lillian Meecham replied, her voice sad with understanding.

"I'll never see Belinda or Kate or Tina or even Louise again."

"Well be back for visits."

"That's what you said when we left Cherry Point," Karen answered.

"Well get back to Cherry Point someday."

"That's what you said when we left Camp Lejeune too."

"Well get back to Camp Lejeune someday," Mrs. Meecham said, her eyes hunting for her husband's plane again, her voice trailing off into a slurred whisper. "We'll get back there, I promise. Now help me watch for your father's plane."

"You're absolutely right, Karen," Mary Anne said to her sister matter-of-factly," you'll never see Belinda or Kate, or Tina or Louise again. They're as good as dead."

"Don't you start spreading dissension, Mary Anne. I want Dad's homecoming to be absolutely perfect."

"Yes, ma'am," Mary Anne said. Then in a whispered aside to Karen, she said," They're all dead, Karen. They're as good as dead. But don't worry, you'll make lots of new friends in this town we're moving to. Wonderful friends. Then Dad will get orders again and they'll all be dead too."

"Mama," Karen squealed," Mary Anne's trying to spread dissension."

Matthew, the younger brother, who had been monitoring the entire conversation, shouted to his mother," Hey, Mom, do you want me to punch Mary Anne?"

"If you punch me, midget, they'll be burying you in a match box that same night."

"Did you hear that, Mom? Mary Anne's teasing me about being small again."

"Mary Anne, stop that right now."

"You're not that small, Matt. You're practically a giant for a midget."

"I'm going to slap you if you don't hush."

"O.K., O.K., I'm hushing."

"You're lucky Mom stopped me, pig-face. Or I'd've had to hurt you bad," Matt said.

"Yeah, I was worrying about you jumping up as high as you could and hitting me on the knee."

"C'mon, Mary Anne, let's take a walk up the runway while we're waiting for Dad."

"A splendid idea, Ben," Mrs. Meecham agreed.

"That's true form, perfect brother. The Great Peacemaker. You rack up brownie points with Mom and maintain the image of the perfect son."

Ben and Mary Anne began to walk slowly to the northern end of the runway beside the wire fence that paralleled the strip. The voices of their family dimmed with every step. As he walked Ben looked for the plane again and listened for the old buzzing sound, the old familiar anthem of an approaching plane to announce the descent of his father.

"Do you see anything yet?" Mary Anne asked.

"Yes, I do," Ben said, a smile inching along his face. "I sure do see something. If my eyes aren't playing tricks," he said rubbing his eyes with disbelief," I see fourteen passenger pigeons, a squadron of Messerschmitts. Over there I see Jesus Christ rising from the dead. Mary being assumed into heaven. I see a horde of Mongols, Babe Ruth taking a shit, and a partridge in a pear tree."

"I mean, do you see anything interesting?" Mary Anne answered unemotionally. "By the way, Ben, how long have you been waiting for me to ask that question?"

"Oh, about eight months."

"I thought so," Mary Anne replied. "You have very limited powers of spontaneous thought. I knew you'd thought that up a long time ago. I maul you when it's just my mind against your mind."

"Baloney."

"You know it's true. I have a quicker mind and you just won't admit it."

"It might be a little quicker," Ben admitted, "but I want you to remember I can knock every tooth out of your head whenever I want to and there's nothing you can do about it."

"Big brave jock. Big, handsome, he-man jock. I admit you could do it. But I'd get you back."

"How?"

"I'd sneak into your bathroom and steal your tube of Clearasil. I figure that without Clearasil your pimples would multiply so fast you'd be dead within forty-eight hours."

"Your cruelty knows no bounds."

"Of course not, I like to win arguments. In fact, I always win arguments. Back to the subject—have you noticed how bad your face has been breaking out lately?"

"It's not that bad, Mary Anne. When you talk about it, I start feeling like a goddam leper," Ben said, slightly irate.

"I've seen lepers who look a lot better than you do. You know, Ben, if Jesus were alive today, I'd go to him as he preached beside the Jordan, and throw myself at his feet. I'd intercede for you. I'd say, 'Master, you must cure my brother of his maggot face. His name is Benjamin and he likes to be perfect and kiss ass. If you think you're working miracles by curing these lepers, Jesus, my boy, I'll show you a face that will make leprosy look like kidstuff. This will be the greatest challenge of your ministry, Jesus, to cure Ben Meecham, the boy whose face is one big goob."

A sailor with a transistor radio blaring from his back hip pocket passed near Ben and Mary Anne. The long, pure notes of a clarinet spilled out into the Georgia sunshine as Mr. Acker Bilk played "Stranger on the Shore. "The song ended, replaced immediately by Neil Sedaka's "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do. "Both of them stopped talking until the music and the sailor faded out of earshot.

"Ah, yes," Ben sighed, philosophically, "breaking up
is
hard to do."

"How would you know? You've never gone with anybody."

"Neither have you."

"That's what you know. Boys are constantly lusting after my body."

"Oh yeah! I've seen your body cause other emotions. Like nausea. But never lust."

"Let's talk about your nose for a while."

"I surrender. God, with you talking about my skin and my nose, you're going to make me sensitive about my looks."

As they began the long walk back to their mother, the heavy languor of the afternoon soaking into them, Ben studied his mother.

Lillian Meecham was a stunningly beautiful woman of thirty-seven. Time had encircled her softly, enriched and deepened her beauty as the years tiptoed past her. Her hair was long, a dark luxuriant red, swept to one side of her head and half covering her right eye, a haughty, insouciant mane that added a touch of ingenuous naughtiness to a face that otherwise had the innocence of a Madonna.

Her face was a reflection of many things; a sum of many transfiguring, even violent events. Her smile was joyous, but the joy was fringed with grief. Her lips were full and passionate, her nose, mischievous and arrogant. In her face, hardening experiences were registered in soft places. Pain was exiled to the nearly invisible lines shooting out from the eyes. Grief radiated in tight stars from both sides of her mouth. These wrinkles were the only indications that the face had suffered and that time had left at least a few footprints in passage. It was a kind face; a face that sons could love, husbands worship, and daughters envy.

Her body was firm, ripe, and full. It had rich curves that invited the secret scholarship of men's eyes. She had borne four children and suffered three miscarriages, but her stomach was as hard and flat as her hand.

From a distance of a hundred yards, Ben saw her speaking to Karen and Matthew. She spoke with her hands, entertaining her two youngest children with fluid movements of such consummate grace that it seemed as though light music should be filtering from somewhere in the dizzying late afternoon heat. Her fingers could speak individual words. They were long and slender; each nail was richly translucent and sculpted into the small white eighth moons where her file had worked: she had more vanity about her hands and her stomach than any other parts of her body.

But Ben had watched his mother change as the day approached for his father to return from his year's journey overseas. It was a universal law in military families that mothers could not maintain the strict discipline enforced by fathers to whom discipline was a religion and a way of life. When the military man left for a year, the whole family relaxed in a collective, yet unvoiced sigh. For a year, there was a looseness, a freedom from tension, a time when martial law was suspended. Though a manless house was an uncompleted home, and though the father was keenly missed, there was a laxity and fragile vigor that could not survive his homecoming.

Lillian Meecham was not a disciplinarian, but as the day of her husband's return neared, she knew instinctively that she had to harden into a vestigial imitation of her husband, so his arrival would not be too much of a shock to her children. His hand had traditionally been very heavy when he returned from overseas, so intent was he on re-establishing codes of discipline and ensuring that the children marched to his harsher cadences. For the last month she had been preparing them. She conducted unannounced inspections, yelled frequently, scolded often, and had even slapped Matthew when he argued about one of her directives. Tension flowed like a black-water creek through the family as the day of Colonel Meecham's arrival neared. The change of command ceremony took place the moment his plane arrived at Smythe Field. Lillian Meecham would hand the household over to her husband without a single word passing between them.

Mary Anne had a very different face from her mother's. Her face was wise, freckled, and touchingly vulnerable. Thick glasses diminished somewhat its natural prettiness. The gaudy frames of the glasses were cheap, drawing attention to features that needed no heavy emphasis. She was much shorter than her mother and seemed chunky and ungainly in comparison. Her breasts were large and full, but she dressed in loose-fitting tentlike clothes so as not to draw attention to herself. Because of the thick glasses, her eyes had a bloated appearance as though they were both trapped in a goldfish bowl. Her eyes were precisely the same blue as her mother's, but they nursed a wisdom and hurt strange to find in so young a girl. She opened a compact as she walked along and dabbed at several faded freckles. Never in her life had she liked the stories told by mirrors.

The wind picked up, died, and picked up again. It was a wind that offered no relief from the heat, but it caught Lillian's hair and pushed it softly back, an auburn shining pennant, a surrogate windsock, revealing a long, elegant neck.

"Mom looks beautiful today, doesn't she?" Ben said without looking at his sister.

Mary Anne frowned and said," Yeah, Oedipus. She always looks beautiful. What else is new?"

"She must have spent a lot of time dolling up for Dad."

"About two weeks I'd say. She had her hair done, her nails done, her eyes done, and her clothes done. The only thing wrong is she couldn't have her children done."

"Do you think she's excited about Dad coming home?"

"Yes," Mary Anne answered. "She loves the creep. Like all of us, she's afraid of him. But also like all of us, she loves him. I read all of his letters to her. They're full of disgusting sexual references. It's very sicko-sexual."

"You read Dad's letters?" Ben said, amazed. "Mom would kill you if she knew that."

"It's my duty to keep informed. I will tell you one lewd, but fascinating piece of information. He refers to his penis as Mr. Cannon and her vagina as Miss Nancy. Isn't that lovely? It made me want to puke."

"I would advise you, dear sister, not to slip up and call Dad Mr. Cannon sometime. And I would never refer to Miss Nancy under any circumstances. But what the hell, I bet it's hard for a husband and wife to be separated for a whole year. I know it gets lonely for Mom, but God knows we need these breaks from Dad once in a while. I've got one year left with the big fellow before I'm home free."

"Dad is the most interesting person I've ever met," Mary Anne said thoughtfully.

"The fist prints on my jaw can attest to that."

"I don't mean that. He's hard to figure out. He loves his family, more than anything in the world except the Marine Corps, yet none of us ever have a real conversation with him."

"Well, it's been a good year without him. I've loved being at Mamaw's."

"Anything would be a good year compared to the one before he left for Europe."

"It was definitely not a banner year. But that's over. Mom says he's changed a lot since he's been gone. He's evidently missed us a lot."

"I've missed him too, kind of."

"So have I," Ben said with difficulty. "Kind of. "Then suddenly he said," I hear a plane."

Far off, the quiet percussion of an approaching plane resonated over the field. Ben and Mary Anne sprinted the remaining distance to where their mother stood with Matthew and Karen. Ben ran backward trying to catch the first glimpse of the plane, watching for the sharp reflection of sunlight off a wing or cockpit window, but still he could not see it. The buzz of the plane seemed to fill the whole sky and came from no one source. It grew louder, more defined. When they finally reached Mrs. Meecham, she was smiling.

"I see it," she said simply.

"Where?" Ben cried. "I haven't seen it yet."

"It's at two o'clock just below that big cloud."

"I see it. I see it," Matt shouted.

"There's Daddy's plane," Karen squealed, jumping up and down in her new ruffled dress and patent leather shoes.

Mary Anne was staring blankly toward the noise. From long experience she knew that the plane was not in her range of vision, nor would it be for several minutes.

"I still don't see the goddam thing," Ben whispered to Mary Anne.

"Don't feel like the Lone Ranger," Mary Anne answered," I won't be able to see it until I'm hit by one of the wings."

"Why don't you turn those glasses of yours around and use them as binoculars?"

"Very funny."

"Seriously, I tried that once with your glasses. For the first time, I saw the rings of Saturn. "Then he shouted suddenly, "There's the plane. I was looking right at the thing. I must be getting rusty."